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Shrugging Off Security Concerns, BP Says It Will Scale Up Oil Production In Iraq

In the short space of about three months, the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant has claimed control over a large swath of northern Iraq and “indulged in the kind of savagery that a medieval tyrant might struggle to match,” as a recent report by Platts put it.

To put this statement in perspective, Platts wrote this a few days before ISIL released a video of the beheading of James Foley, an American freelance journalist.

Despite the escalating violence, BP, the British oil major, is scaling operations in Iraq up — not back.

On Thursday, BPBP agreed to nearly double production levels at the giant Rumaila oil field in southern Iraq within the next decade to some 2.1 million barrels per day.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, BP was among the major oil companies to set up shop in Iraq. Currently, BP accounts for roughly half of oil production from the giant Rumaila field. Given the field’s massive reserves, BP can increase production levels with only modest levels of investment compared to “greenfield” projects in other regions.

The same can likely be said for other oil and gas fields in Iraq.

Bud Holzman, a retired Army officer and petroleum geologist who advised the U.S. Central Command on Iraq oil and gas, claims that the total amount of oil and natural gas reserves in Iraq has been vastly underestimated.

In 2004, the Army asked Holzman to “determine the real hydrocarbon reserves of Iraq.” In a recent email exchange, Holzman described what he learned about hydrocarbons in Iraq:

There were so many fields, and the first one he worked on was East Baghdad since he was living just west of the field. There were 1,100 barrels coming out of the field, and that was it. He started looking at all the data, and there were 16 billion barrels sitting under his feet. The field was an anticlinal structure 80 kilometers long and 15 kilometers wide and had 10 pays, Cretaceous through Miocene. The field could produce a million barrels a day, but the existing infrastructure could only accommodate 25,000 barrels.

After reviewing data for numerous fields and conferring with Iraqi engineers, he concluded the total amount of oil and natural gas reserves in Iraq had been vastly underestimated. He estimated with the data he had that there were 230 billion barrels for the 84 fields at the time. Since then there are a few new fields recently discovered (9-14 BBO—9 TCFG) in the Kurdish region. He started looking at natural gas reserves, especially Akkas field in the Western Desert and unexplored regions of Kurdistan, and calculated almost 200-plus trillion cubic feet (TCFG) of reserves. Other geologists put the figure closer to 350 TCFG. Most of the current gas is being flared off.

He looked at the old figures (115 BBO and 100 TCFG) and asked Iraqi engineers and Oil Ministry officials what these figures were, and they said they just gave them out from years ago. They were told to say that, and no one knew where the numbers originated. Since then, Iraq has revised its estimate upward to 150 BBO. There is good reason to believe that there is even more.

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You do not know what you are talking about. They are taking a big risk that you would not take. Also, remember that BP is a foreign company, not taking trillions of our tax dollars. Go over to Iraq and see how things are there instead of making silly comments from the safety of your living room chair.

Trillions in war costs and millions of families destroyed in order to control these fields. BP’s “brass” reap all the reward and risk nothing again – externalizing the risk onto our armed forces and their henchmen in Iraq oil fields from their “arm chairs”. You’re the one appearing silly, Bud.

——” Go over to Iraq and see how things are there instead of making silly comments from the safety of your living room chair.”——–

If we use biofuels, we don’t need to go to Iraq. And we save a whole lot of money that we’d have to spend on military hardware, not to mention blood, sweat and tears. But that is all part of the “tragedy of the commons” that was referred to.

The same “cartel” (big oil and Hearst paper) made “biofuel” or “hemp” illegal one hundred years ago – the same time they conquered Iraq and married Saud. The same despots have ruled the globe (especially USA) since, firing Weinberg and his 1000000000000000000% better Thorium Molten Salt reactor technology – that ran flawlessly for five years in Oak Ridge – in preference for the leaking, melting, proliferating light water reactors, so they could get their precious nuclear bomb fuel for “free” – and make energy expensive, and to keep their mideast oil play viable.

ISIS will do exactly the same thing that Saddam Hussein did in Kuwait if they are losing. Which is exactly the same thing that the Russians did as they lost ground to the Nazis in WW2. Which is the same thing that Sherman and Grant did in the South during the US Civil War………………which is the same that……………….and so on back through history to Rome and Carthage, The Greeks and Troy, and so on, and so on.

They want the oil and natural gas in the future. That is their main source of income. Even if they are pushed out of some of the minor fields they control, they think that they may get them back. Some of the fields will probably be destroyed due to the figthing over them; however they are not as stupid as Saddam.